A broken city, a decimated relationship, agonizing illness, loss of hope. In the heart of the pandemic in 2020, four Bay Area musicians came together to form Thunder Boys and record an album amidst a period of intense darkness.
What unfolded is Leak in the Dreamworld, an ecstatic journey through the wreckage, a vessel that grew not out of obligation, but unfettered necessity. In some ways, the record birthed itself: the brainchild of Tyson Vogel, Brandon Chester, Aaron Diko, and Justin Flowers, who found themselves drawn together to form a special connection through hardship and the inexplicable drive to create. The group recorded Leak in the Dreamworld between the 6 rooms in Vogel’s parent’s home in Sonoma, CA, an environment that would offer them the space and freedom for their creative chemistry to thrive.
Though the majority of the songs on Leak in the Dreamworld were penned by Tyson Vogel, the record is far from strictly a singer-songwriter venture. Vogel’s lyrics come alive in the collaboration between Aaron Diko (POW, Gravite, Cindy, Body Double), Brandon Chester (Purple Mercy, Banquet), and Justin Flowers (CCR Headcleaner, Long Legged Woman). “Each one of them is so sensitive and special.” Vogel says. “You can feel it. I just really believe in the beauty and spontaneity of collaboration between people who are all connected—you all become one idea. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without them” After the recording process, Vogel took the album to producer and long-time mentor Karl Derfler, who expanded Leak in the Dreamworld into its final form.
Derfler had also worked with Vogel on his past project, Two Gallants. That band, started modestly within the confines of Vogel’s parents’ laundry room in 2002, embarked on an odyssey across America, navigating five self-booked national tours. Their journey was sustained by self-recorded, self-burned CDRs and the support of individuals deeply moved by their craft, offering both humbling devotion and the occasional roof over the band members’ heads.
Today Glide is excited to premiere the video for the standout track “Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars,” a shimmering work of cosmic psych-folk that finds this band letting trippy vocals float dreamily over surf rock guitar. The band describes “Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars” as “a song written as an ode to the fertile blood rushing in our veins, as nourishment for the hopeless, witness of the devastated – a hymn wrestling towards action, reality and Love, crying for the disillusion of the empty idols we build within, or are slayed by around us – an attempted scripture to the Soul and the painfully human hardship of ‘letting go.'” If that sounds like heady stuff, that’s because it is. The music complements these deep lyrics with vocals that grow increasingly sinister and blistering guitar that spirals into blissful oblivion at times. The video seeks to visualize this tale of transformation in a way that feels quintessentially trippy California.
The band shares a personal tale of how this tune came to fruition:
Pandemic was new and rife, personal and worldly hardships danced a bloody shadow into every angle of living – Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars was the first collaborative song to come out of Thunder Boys. Blind to what was coming, we as a tribe had taken refuge in a family home in the obscurities of Sonoma County, each looking after the other’s personal and creative well-being.
Ghosting to SF only for our expanding recording needs, i set up a versatile recording studio, employing each room of the house, hallways included, to capture every sound uniquely – there was a sacred (if not totally frightening) air about the house… a crew of creative, soulful individuals, all living together for the first time without confidence in the future. Being careful with each other, and the world, there were a lot of “sorrys” being passed around, there was manifold sadness everywhere, and to counteract this and to help pick each other up, the concept of a Sorry Jar was born, taking the guise of a lighthearted guide/mantra of buoyancy/resilience to ones true self/life/story through the deep dive of inner dark or personal destruction.
Sorry Jars & Shooting Stars is about investing into your “Sorry’s”, murdering your manipulated ego, seeing, singing, BEING, clearly what you carry within and in so doing, investing into your freedom, your own Transformation, and to be able to bring that light to others in the dark.
WATCH:
